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On Ambush & A Space in Time poems

By Dave Connolly

On Ambush
20 July 1969

Piercing the night, from the right,
the RTO whispered, "Brothers,
an American is walking on the moon!"

We all looked up, then forward,
into some poor papasan's
thousand-year-old rice paddy,
pulverized by our planes
into round puddles of puppy shit.

Some dead serious, totally sane,
nineteen-year-old Boonierat said,
"I don't see him out there."

A Space in Time
20 July 2004

Someone in the crowd
at the family barbecue said,
"Thirty-five years ago today,
a man walked on the moon."

I thought of Neil Armstrong,
the Earth shining so blue over him,
taking that historic step down into
the field of craters before him.

I thought of me, on ambush,
looking up at that bright moon,
the rice paddies, lit up before me,
pockmarked by our bombs.

We were brothers-in-arms then,
Neil and I, separated
only by thin air, both of us
a long, long way from America,

the two of us hoping against hope
we'd be home soon,
the kid in the foxhole
and the man on the moon.

Dave Connolly is a longtime VVAW member
who served with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment.